THE SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PASCHA - SUNDAY OF THE BLIND MAN

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

The Healing of the Man Born Blind

Once, when Jesus was in Jerusalem, performing miracles and preaching His teaching, His enemies became so enraged that they wanted to stone Him. But He departed from them and, as He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth.

His disciples asked Him: “Teacher, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Jesus answered: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be revealed in him.”

The Lord had compassion on the unfortunate blind man. Spitting on the ground, He made clay, anointed the blind man’s eyes with it, and said to him: “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.” This was a spring at the foot of Mount Zion. The blind man went, washed, and received his sight. This miracle filled everyone with amazement. Some said, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?”

Others said, “It is he.” Others said, “He only resembles him.” But he himself said, “I am the one.”

They began asking the man born blind how he had received his sight. He answered: “The Man called Jesus made clay, anointed my eyes, and told me to wash in the pool of Siloam. I washed, and now I see.” They brought him to the Pharisees, and it should be noted that this miracle had been performed on the Sabbath day. In response to the Pharisees’ questions, the healed young man again recounted the story of his miraculous healing. Then a dispute arose among the Pharisees concerning Jesus. Some said: “This Man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath.” Others objected: “How can a sinful man perform such miracles?” They asked the healed man: “What do you say about Him?” “I think He is a prophet,” he answered.

Homily for the Sunday of the Blind Man (St. Cleopa of Sihastria)

Homily for the Sunday of the Blind Man

On Spiritual Blindness

By St. Cleopa of Sihastria

“For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind” (John 9:39).

Christ is Risen!

Beloved faithful,

We can draw many teachings of every kind from today’s Holy Gospel if we examine its text carefully. One of these teachings concerns the spiritual blindness of the man enslaved by sins.

How much spiritual blindness there was in the minds of the scribes and Pharisees, who not only did not believe in the miracles beyond nature performed by Christ the Lord, but even greatly blasphemed Him, saying that “by Beelzebul, the ruler of demons, He casts out demons” (Mark 3:22). Such blindness filled their minds that though they had eyes, they did not see, and though they had ears, they did not hear. Therefore the Lord calls them “blind Pharisees” (Matthew 23:26).

Concerning this spiritual blindness of the scribes and Pharisees, the chief priests and teachers of the Jews, and the punishment awaiting them for it, the Prophet David says through the Holy Spirit: “Let their eyes be darkened so that they may not see, and bend their backs forever” (Psalm 69:23). And the great Prophet Isaiah prophesied concerning the spiritual blindness of the people of Israel, saying: “God has given them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see and ears that they should not hear, to this very day” (Isaiah 29:10). And again: “The heart of this people has grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and return to Me and I should heal them” (Isaiah 6:10).

Homily One on the Day of the Ascension (St. Justin Popovich)

Homily One on the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman 

By St. Justin Popovich

(Delivered in 1966 in the Ćelije Monastery, transcribed from a recording.)

Today is the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord, the Feast of the Lord’s Ascension with His body into Heaven.

With today’s Feast, the Nativity is brought to completion: it both completes and explains what the Lord Christ intended when He became man, what He desired, what He purposed, why He was born on the Nativity as man, He Who is God, why He took a body upon Himself. Today’s Feast tells us this great and holy mystery and explains why the Lord became man, why He took upon Himself the mocked, humiliated, sinful, and mortal human body. What was the purpose of this? Today’s Great and Holy Day explains it to us. The Lord became incarnate, the Lord took a body upon Himself and became man in order to raise the human body above all the heavens, to glorify the human body with inexpressible glory, to lift it above all Angels and Archangels and seat it at the right hand of God the Father.¹ Thus, this is why the Lord took a body upon Himself: the whole path has been completed. The human body, once disgraced in sins, in death, in horrors and terrors — that human body the Lord took upon Himself and ascended with it into Heaven.

First Homily on the Day of the Ascension of the Lord (St. Innocent of Kherson)

First Homily on the Day of the Ascension of the Lord

St. Innocent of Kherson

“Then He led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up His hands He blessed them. And it came to pass, while He blessed them, that He departed from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped Him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy” (Luke 24:50–52).

Thus ended the earthly course of our Savior and Lord. Much did He suffer, and greatly was He glorified. There has never been sorrow like His sorrow, nor is there glory like His glory. “He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the Name which is above every name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:8–11).

Shall we ever behold this glory of our Lord? Not only shall we behold it, brethren, but each of us, according to his measure, shall also partake of this glory, if only we do not make ourselves unworthy of it. We shall behold it, because in His final great prayer the Lord Himself asked His Father for this very thing: “that they may behold My glory which You have given Me” (John 17:24). And the angels who appeared to the Apostles after the Ascension testified that the Lord would come again to all of us on the last day in the same manner as the Apostles saw Him ascending into heaven (Acts 1:11).

Holy Martyr Basiliskos in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

1. Saint Basiliskos lived during the reign of Emperor Maximian (3rd century) and came from the village of Choumalia in Amaseia of Pontus. He was the nephew of the Holy Great Martyr Theodore the Recruit. Although at first he was tortured together with the fellow soldiers of Saint Theodore, Eutropios and Kleonikos, those two were perfected through martyrdom for Christ, while Basiliskos himself was left in prison. But because he had a great desire to complete the course of martyrdom himself, he prayed to God for this, and he was granted a vision of the Lord, Who commanded him to go and bid farewell to his family, and then, when he arrived at Comana, he would receive the martyr’s crown.

The Saint was therefore released from prison by the soldiers, and together with them he went to his home. After bidding farewell to his mother and brothers, exhorting them to remain steadfast in the faith of Christ, he stayed with them for a short time. But the governor Agrippas, having learned of his release, sent other soldiers, who arrested him. They bound him and put sandals on his feet that had nails driven through them, and thus they led him by force along the road to Comana — the place where his martyrdom awaited him. Arriving at the village of the Daknoi, they were hosted in the house of a woman named Traiane, while the Saint was tied to a dry plane tree with his hands bound behind him. The Saint prayed, and the plane tree sprouted and put forth many leaves. Moreover, a spring of water burst forth from its roots, at the very place where the Saint had been tied. When the soldiers and the woman saw this miracle, they declared that they believed in Christ and loosed the Saint from his bonds.

Prologue in Sermons: May 22

  

Why We Often See That the Wicked Seem Untouched by the Devil in This Life, While the Godly Suffer From Him

May 22

(From the Paterikon.)
 
By Archpriest Victor Guryev

Why is it, brethren, that in this life we often see wicked people as though they experience no temptations from the devil, while the godly suffer from him? Why is this so?

A monk once asked an elder: “Why is it that wicked people abandon fasting and prayer, give themselves over to gluttony, deceive and rob one another, do whatever they wish, often break their oaths, and pay no attention to the fact that they sin grievously? They even receive the Holy Mysteries calmly, and all this seems to mean nothing to them, as though everything were perfectly normal. And why is it that the godly exhaust themselves with fasting, vigils, prayers, and dry eating, deprive themselves of bodily comfort, weep and lament, and say that they are great sinners and deserving of the fires of Gehenna?”

Hearing this from his disciple, the elder replied with a sigh: “You spoke rightly when you said that for sinners everything seems to mean nothing. They have fallen so deeply that they are no longer even aware of it. Yes, because of their lack of repentance, they cannot rise again. Think about it: why should the devil struggle against them when they themselves already lie prostrate before him and cannot get up? He does not fight such people. But the godly, though sometimes defeated, also overcome; though they fall, they quickly rise again and in the end will completely conquer the enemy of their salvation.”

The Ascension of Christ Points to Pentecost and the Second Coming

 

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

1. The Completion of His Saving Work

With His Ascension, the Lord completed His redemptive and saving work on earth. His ascent into Heaven was the continuation of His Birth, His Baptism, His teaching ministry, His Crucifixion, and His Resurrection. What the Lord began when He came into the world reached its fulfillment through His divine Ascension: He united mankind with the Triune God. According to the Kontakion of the feast, which summarizes its essence, the Lord ascended in glory, “having fulfilled the divine plan for our sake and united things on earth with things in heaven.”

This glorious Ascension does not mean that the Lord rejected His physical body and returned as God alone to the right hand of the Father. The Lord ascended into Heaven, “where He was before,” together with His holy body, which means that the incarnation of God was not a temporary episode in His life. Such temporary appearances are seen among the “deities” of the ancient Greeks and other peoples, when some “god” appears in human form in the world to accomplish a specific mission and then returns to his normal state. But the Son of God, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, became incarnate as man, assumed human nature, and retains it forever. If humanity was healed from the wound of sin, it was because God, moved by infinite love, united His life with ours. Forever now within the Godhead there also exists human nature. And this means that in Christ, man has “conquered” heaven. Already we exist within the Kingdom of God in the person of Jesus Christ. “I go to prepare a place for you,” said the Lord (John 14:2).

Saints Constantine and Helen in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

Saint Constantine is a scandal to many with regard to his sainthood. How is it possible, they claim, that an emperor who by necessity waged wars, gave orders for the destruction of his opponents, even of his own people whenever he thought they opposed him, could ultimately become a saint and be honored as a saint by the fullness of the Church? Yet the question must be broadened: how is it possible for the Apostle Paul to be a saint and to be regarded as the greatest of the apostles, when he too committed many violent acts in his life, so much so that even his name alone functioned among the first Christians as a synonym for threat and murder? And not only Paul, but many others among the saints of our faith as well. What do those who hesitate regarding the sanctity of Constantine the Great — and of the others who used violence — fail to understand or sufficiently take into account? The power of repentance, and even more, the will of God Himself. For — to focus on the Equal-to-the-Apostles Saint — whatever violent acts Constantine committed, he committed while he was not yet a Christian, or after his conversion and certainly before his definitive entrance into the faith through holy baptism, acting in ignorance, while God Himself gave abundant signs of His will that Constantine should be near Him.

Prologue in Sermons: May 21

To Guard Ourselves Against Sin, It is Good to Reflect Often That the Devil Wages Constant Warfare Against Us, and That Those Who Overcome Him Do Not Remain Without Reward

May 21

(From a Homily of Saint John Chrysostom on the Upbringing and Discipline of Children)
 
By Archpriest Victor Guryev

Some foolish parents completely neglect the upbringing of their children in their early years. When a child does something wrong, the foolish parent says: “Oh, it is nothing; he is still a child and does not understand. When he grows up, he will stop doing such things.” And so the child grows up like a wild apple tree in the forest — uncultivated, overgrown, and barren. But if you taste the fruit of that tree, you will not rejoice, for it is sour and bitter. Thus, without restraint, correction, or instruction, the child eventually grows into a slave of his disordered inclinations; his early bad behavior becomes habit, and he becomes an unworthy member of society, a grief to his parents, and a burden and scandal to many.

“Nothing is worse,” says Saint Chrysostom, “than when the faults of children are not corrected, and thus become habits in them. These faults, when neglected, usually corrupt the child to such an extent that later there is no possibility of correcting him by any exhortation. The devil then leads such children about like captives wherever he wishes. He becomes their absolute ruler, gives them destructive counsels, and the unfortunate children, not even realizing that these counsels lead them to eternal ruin, carry them out with full willingness.”